Dan Mac Alpine: Rubber meeting the road on transportation reform

Dan Mac Alpine

Thursday

Feb 26, 2009 at 12:01 AMFeb 26, 2009 at 2:30 AM

Patrick may well be maneuvering this fiscal crisis to push through a package of both transportation and fiscal reforms. Maybe it’s the only way the commonwealth will ever face these issues and make the needed reforms. Let’s hope the Linskys, Montignys and Grants seize this crisis as an opportunity to pass changes at least a generation in the making.

Funny how life works out sometimes.

I went to high school with Rep. David Linsky, D-Natick, and ran track with Sen. Mark Montigny, D-New Bedford, at what’s now UMass Dartmouth.

Neither seems too pleased with what’s happening around transportation reform and the need dig out from our transportation debt — including some $2.2 billion in Big Dig debt, a $1 billion in annual infrastructure maintenance debt, a $5 billion debt at the MBTA and a $165 million operating debt at the T.

Linsky’s none too pleased with the Turnpike Authority’s decision to approve a two-tiered toll increase, with the first phase beginning March 29. Linksy’s own bill relies on adding 29 cents to the gas tax. And Montigny is far from thrilled with Jim Aliosi Jr., newly appointed transportation secretary.

I haven’t seen either Linsky or Montigny for many years. But from what I remember of them, they’re both nice guys and both tough competitors.

Linsky played tennis and Montigny ran the 400 meter hurdles, truly a crazy man’s event — I can still see him clearing a hurdle, hair flying, a kinetic sculpture of power and precision.

I wouldn’t want to bet against either one of them.

If I were to bump into them in some mythical modern-day locker room, here’s what I’d tell them:

“This is an opportunity to move the ball forward on reform and to develop a plan that faces our transportation debt. The T wasting money on Charlie Cards and MassPort raising parking fees with no notice or public input doesn’t help. But, for as long as I can remember, probably for as long as we can remember, the state’s been talking about reform at MassPort, the Pike and the T. Nothing’s been done since before Mike Barnacle was considered a columnist and not a fiction writer.

“This package may not have everything in terms of reform I’d like to see and not everyone crafting it may be as pure as we’d like, but it is reform and it does advance the ball.”

In Beverly, Rep. Mary Grant, also sees this fiscal transportation crisis as a historic opportunity for reform and the Republicans are pushing the reform button as well.

“Reform has to happen first,” said Grant. “Until we have that solved, we don’t know how much revenue you need and when.”

Naturally, Barney Keller, communications director of the Mass GOP, put a sharper edge on the reform message, using it to slash at Gov. Deval Patrick.

“We have to go with reform first and then look at the revenue side. Gov. Patrick wants to do both at the same time. This should be about reform first and we still have no reform legislation filed. That’s ridiculous,” Keller said.

Patrick said last Friday he would sign no hike in the gas tax without transportation reform and endorsed the reforms suggested in a 2007 study by the Transportation Finance Commission — so Keller is right, technically Patrick has filed no reform, but he has put support behind reform and specifically what reforms he wants to see.

The fact is Patrick has inched toward reform, dumping 100 toll takers and swapping state police for civilian flaggers at many state construction sites.

But even if Patrick and the Legislature were to implement every reform the commission recommended it would only cut the debt by 20 percent, which still leaves 80 percent of the problem.

Keller calls a choice between toll hikes or a hike in the gas tax a “false choice.”

The GOP is protesting any hike in the gas tax, but simply criticizing the tax hike is the real false choice.

This is more of the GOP’s mantra, “You can have everything and pay for nothing.”

And this problem is going to cost. Period. Grant estimates a toll increase would add $550 a year to a North Shore commute. A 50-mile, round-trip commute with the 19-cent gas tax increase would cost the commuter $118 a year, she said.

I’m not looking forward to paying more for gas. No one is. But the alternative, junk-bond status for the Pike and increased borrowing costs for taxpayers, meaning even more of my tax dollars going to pay for debt rather than services, is even worse.

Patrick may well be maneuvering this fiscal crisis to push through a package of both transportation and fiscal reforms. Maybe it’s the only way the commonwealth will ever face these issues and make the needed reforms. Let’s hope the Linskys, Montignys and Grants seize this crisis as an opportunity to pass changes at least a generation in the making.

Dan Mac Alpine is senior editor of the Beverly Citizen.

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